Whitechapel Gods Read online

  Oliver longed to see Hews’ face, but the smog rendered him ghostly and insubstantial.

  “Let’s get on,” he said. “The cloaks are already moving against us, and we’re a long way from Shadwell.”

  They called it Sherwood Forest.

  The tenement took that name from the branchlike protrusions of steel that poked out of the walls at odd angles. The building had been constructed around a central set of two spiraling beams that roughly resembled a trunk, the floors having been constructed at uneven intervals conducive to the use of the trunk’s branches. Missy agreed that it did look rather more like a tree house than a proper dwelling for human beings. Parts of it even hung over the edge of the Underbelly, perched with a preposterous slant above a twenty-storey fall. Oliver had purchased it some years ago, with money gathered through the ill-conceived thefts of his earlier years.

  Oliver Sumner, respectable landowner. One half of her giggled at such silliness. The other half tallied this as a point in his favour. She had always fancied tall men. And if that tall man had wealth, youth, other men in his employ, and connections…well, that made him attractive indeed.

  Now if only it weren’t for this distracting rebellion, and I could work on him a little harder…

  She pursed her lips and chafed inwardly at that sentiment.

  Yes, my dear, you are a heartless, calculating shrew, as I made you.

  She hiked her skirts just up to the ankles and held them to the right as she climbed the grime-coated concrete steps to the door. An endless battle raged between organic and mechanical spiders in the brick door frame, sometimes spilling out of its many holes to harass unwary solicitors. She gently pushed away some fresh webs and twisted the door handle first left, then right, then left three turns. The lock clicked. The door opened.

  Heckler’s traps lay dormant on the left and right sides of the inner arch. She did not care to muse on how they worked or their intended result, and brushed past them into the foyer, where the stair twisted around the steel trunk, and an uneven mezzanine ringed the room on the second floor.

  Sherwood Forest had a kitchen, a dining hall, a lounge, a smoking parlour and eight apartments. Oliver had offered her one of them once and she’d nearly slapped him for it. An unmarried woman living under a roof with four unmarried men? She knew exactly what people would say about that.

  Rumours are vicious little things. What does a lady have if not her reputation? One of Matron Gisella’s lectures.

  In honesty, she had simply been terrified of the thought of men having uncontrolled access to her bedroom. Missy had taken her own one-room flat down the street, one with sturdy locks and a fat, scatterbrained landlady.

  She sat for a moment on one of the foyer’s worn benches and fished her cigarette case from her handbag.

  Unladylike, those accursed things, the matron had always complained.

  Funny how all the girls smoked them anyway, behind your back, you old shrew.

  Now, now. Some respect is due. After all, did I not feed you and clothe you and instruct you in all the fineries of etiquette?

  You sold us for two guineas a night, you black-hearted villainess!

  The match lit on the first strike and she drew. The acrid smoke that stung its way down her lungs was really no worse than the air outside; nor was it any more pleasurable. Why smoke them at all, then? She left the question unanswered.

  She found the occupants upstairs, gathered at a small table in the parlour. Thomas, Phineas, and Heckler lounged in moth-bitten high-backed chairs, drinks in their hands, cigars in a tray on a small side table made of battered tin. Moderate sums of money were spread on the table, as were several piles of cards from Heckler’s star-backed fifty-two-piece deck. Portraits of stern-looking, haggard people of both sexes hung around the perimeter of the room; they had been there at the time of purchase and were now silent companions to the dwelling’s new occupants.

  Thomas wore a beige wool shirt a tad tight on his large frame, revealing the irregularities of his structure, particularly his metal arm. Missy had never seen him clean shaven, and yet never with a beard; he seemed to have perpetual stubble. Thomas stared at Heckler with squinted eyes and sweat beading on his brow.

  Heckler was dressed in a crisp and clean white cotton shirt with tweed slacks and suspenders, looking dapper as always. Missy secretly suspected he made a point of dressing well to hide his sunken chest and bony shoulders. His face drooped in that lifeless way he referred to as his “poker face.” Phineas sat slumped, nestled down in the same filthy black ulster he always wore, with an oversized, crushed top hat sitting low on his head—like a leprechaun down on his luck. He also wore a thick blindfold across his eyes.

  Slowly, and with no hint of a smile, Heckler laid his cards solemnly on the tabletop.

  “Codswallop!” Tom said. He slapped his cards down as Heckler smugly swept the central pile of coins to his edge of the table. “Some Yankee trick, that was. I’ll bet those bloody cards are marked.”

  Heckler stroked back the corners of his handsome moustache and smiled serenely.

  “Bad luck’s the heritage of mankind,” he said, his American accent drawn and smooth like stretched linen. “You know Ah might have up and shot you, you gone accusin’ me of cheatin’ back home.”

  “Cards ain’t marked,” Phin said through teeth clenched on the stub of his cigar. “Bastard’s just better’n we are.”

  Tom downed the remainder of his whiskey. “And how would you know that, you hunchbacked codger? Not peeking, I hope.”

  Phineas spat the cigar onto the silver tray along with a sizable trail of saliva, where it all landed exactly in one corner. “I inspected the deck during the first shuffle. You think I trust this Yankee—or you, you pile of rust?”

  Tommy smiled, warming to the moment. “So you were looking at the deck after all, you limp waddler. Why would one who stinks like a gull-eaten trout think he can one-up me dressed like a Shoreditch beggar?”

  “Ah, you’re one to talk, you chamber-pot reject. Probably spit rust out yer pecker. By the bye, there’s a lady present.”

  Missy smiled innocently as Thomas and Heckler shot out of their seats, faces reddening. They struggled to hide drinks and extinguish cigars.

  “Why, thank you, Phineas,” Missy said, swaying her hips as she stepped into the room. “I was beginning to wonder if these men had any manners at all.”

  Phineas grunted, and lit another cigar.

  “Beggin’ pardon, miss,” Heckler said. He smoothed out his felt vest and tugged his shirtsleeves back level with his wrists. “Was quite improper of us.”

  “Smoking and drinking and gambling?” Missy said. She sucked daintily on her own cigarette and waltzed to the table, where she lifted Phineas’ drink right from his hand. “Positively vile activities, the lot. You gentlemen should be ashamed of yourselves.”

  Heckler blanched, then shifted his feet in place like a boy of seventeen. Thomas held a serious expression on his face for all of two seconds, then exploded into laughter.

  Phineas just shook his head and stole Tom’s drink.

  Heckler strutted around the table. “Mademoiselle Plantaget,” he said, gracefully sweeping up Missy’s hand. Missy held his gaze as he lifted her hand to give it a kiss.

  His nose came within an inch of the cigarette before he noticed. He coughed and withdrew, retrieving his handkerchief and stuffing it against his nose as if he could wipe the smoke out. This time both Thomas and Phineas laughed.

  “Poor dear. Lost in my eyes, I suppose.”

  Heckler faked a chuckle through his obvious shock.

  “Ah, lass,” said Phineas, “stop punishing the pup for being a gentleman. You’ll ruin him for other Englishwomen.”

  “He will develop a taste for it,” Missy said. “I’m certain he left those Colonial homestead girls behind for a reason.” She raised the glass to her lips and drew the whiskey across her tongue. It slid down her throat like melted chocolate.

  Heckler l
ooked as if he was about to say something, then sat down and began to total his winnings as if that had been his intention the entire time.

  Tom gave him a friendly and devastating slap on the shoulder that nearly threw him into the table. “You’ll get used to it, chum.”

  Heckler gasped in his lost breath, his neck turning red above the starched collar. “Certain Ah will, suh.”

  “He’s a duck, isn’t he?” Missy said. She settled into the table’s fourth chair, an oak and velvet masterpiece of comfort that had seen better days. Heckler jumped as if he’d been seized around the neck.

  “Beggin’ pardon, m’lady, but that there’s Mr. Sumner’s chair.”

  “Oh?” She fixed him with a slow blink and a stare, as an elder matriarch might use to silence her disrespectful grandchildren.

  Heckler flushed fully up to his hairline and squeaked out a response: “He’s real particular about it.”

  “God Almighty, let up on him, lass,” Phineas said, refilling his glass from the bottle.

  Her eyes never left Heckler’s. “But he is such a charming young man. Shouldn’t I get him under my thumb as quickly as possible?” Shouldn’t you claim him as one more ribbon in your hat? One more loaf of bread in your carry basket?

  “Ah, Michelle, but you are a cold bitch,” Phineas said.

  A stinging in her abdomen. Missy’s composure broke, and she flinched visibly.

  Truth is a difficult thing to accept in any guise, said Gisella’s voice. If I recall, you have used such atrocious language to refer to myself on many occasions.

  Her guts clenched and twisted and a horrid, potent loss and sadness gushed up. She pushed it down with a careful, slow, ladylike inhalation, and painted a smile back onto her features.

  “Oh, but I’m very warm as well.”

  They chuckled, and the moment of tension passed.

  She moulded her face into a scowl for a moment. “And you, sir, are not to call me by my proper name.”

  Phineas’ eyebrow snaked out from beneath the blindfold.

  A sigh, and Missy elaborated. “The use of such is reserved only for very particular individuals with whom I share a relationship of a type not to be discussed in impolite company.”

  “Ah.”

  Silence fell for a moment as Thomas gathered the cards and the other men scooped their winnings or remaining capital back into pockets and purses. It was a pity: Missy had always wanted to see how this American game was played, but the presence of a woman always seemed to bring it to an irretrievable end.

  Missy settled back into Oliver’s chair, doubtless referred to as a “throne” when its king was abroad.

  You’ve designs on him. It was no accident you sat in this chair.

  Or perhaps it was because it was the only one unoccupied, witch. The rest of the whiskey she tossed into her mouth without ceremony.

  You’re much cleverer than that, my dear. You wanted to announce your intentions to these three. Romantics that they are, they’ll nudge him in the right direction. You think that and your whorehouse charms will be enough to land him? It is an insult to both of you.

  Gisella’s voice quieted as the alcohol fire bloomed in her stomach. She passed her glass to Thomas with an if-you’d-be-so-kind. He refilled it to half its previous volume and passed it back to her.

  “How were the rounds today?” Thomas said.

  And you forgot to do the rounds. Stupid little girl.

  Oliver insisted at least one of his crew go ’round the Underbelly every day, chatting, eavesdropping, mingling. Then the roundsman had to give a report, a long, silly report in exhausting detail about the state of things, the places people wandered, the things they talked about, the things they needed done. And with that dutifully categorised and compiled in Oliver’s mind, he would set the crew about helping those in need and so forth.

  Why does the man bother to toss away his earnings on building repairs and doctor’s bills and food baskets? He must have an angle, a sinister purpose in all of this, mustn’t he?

  Missy knew men too well to think otherwise, and yet that assessment fell flat every time she tried to assert it regarding Oliver.

  The others were waiting. She cleared her throat and began with the one piece of information certain to distract them.

  “The Ironboys are in town,” she said.

  The three of them fell instantly still. She continued.

  “I saw them marching up the Parade, a full dozen, without cloaks to clear their way. I made some inquiries. Apparently they entered the Blink from the south and descended into the downstreets.” Actually, she had overheard it by pure chance on the walk back to Sherwood, but there was no need to disclose that.

  Thomas scraped his iron knuckles over his stubble. “Did they say why they were here?”

  “No,” Missy said, sipping daintily at her new drink. “Not that they are the most talkative of gentlemen.”

  Phineas, still blindfolded, looked to Heckler. “Lad?”

  Heckler nodded. “Ah’ll take a look.” A little smugness showed as he hefted the velvet bag into which he’d slipped his winnings. “Just a quick trip to mah room first, Ah think.” He strutted from the room.

  “The precociousness of youth,” Tommy commented wistfully. “Those were the grand days, don’t you think, barnacle-bugger?”

  “You’re half my bloody age, grease-breath. You go talkin’ like that again, I’ll crush out your bile and use it to polish my shoes.”

  Missy sighed. “Charming, Phineas. It has always amazed me that you never married.”

  Phineas untied his blindfold and tossed it into the corner. “Ah, I’d have an impossible time slinging the seed at my age, so what’s the point? Unless I had some o’ that seal-testicle tea they make in Bangkok.”

  Missy pointedly dismissed him and turned her full attention to Thomas, who stopped whatever pending insult was about to escape his lips.

  Missy swirled the liquor in her glass. “Is Oliver due back?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Should be anytime, I’d say.”

  “You’ll give us fair warning, won’t you Phineas?” Missy asked sweetly.

  “I’ll hear him before he rounds the block,” Phineas muttered, then paused, regarding Missy from the dark beneath his hat’s brim. “The lady here’s about to ask us ’bout the chief, brass-balls.”

  Thomas fiddled unskillfully with the cards, trying to align them in a single direction. “Well, salt-spit, shall we wait and see if this is an inquiry that deserves answering?”

  Missy leaned forward.

  “I want to know about the Uprising.”

  Thomas’ hands fell still. Silence. Cold. Suddenly Missy’s breathing was too loud for the room. She swallowed and pushed on anyway.

  “Oliver led it, didn’t he?”

  Phineas opened his eyes fully, eyes that might have been blue beneath frosty cataracts. He and Thomas shared a long look, exchanging an unreadable communication.

  Phineas slid his eyes back into a tight squint.

  “Aye, he led it,” he said. “Started with a little girl. Chimney gang hauled her right out o’ her mother’s arms and cut ’em both with a knife when they protested. Ollie was working some angle for Hewey at the time. Can’t recall, now…”

  “Tracking opium,” Tommy said.

  “Right-oh.”

  They fell still. Missy shifted in Oliver’s chair. At length, Phineas continued.

  “Ollie never talks about this, y’see, but the way some o’ the blokes tell it, he just went off. The gang had a cloak leading it and Ollie went manic and beat his head inside out with a milk jug.”

  Missy gasped. The image of it assailed her—the violence of the act.

  He wouldn’t. Would he? Is he capable of it?

  The man is a criminal and a spy. Of course he’s capable of it.

  Thomas took up the thread, staring dully at the unmoving cards. “That might have been the curtain for him, but when he took his first swing at that canary, all the regular coves
and sweaters and coal backers on the street just charged in. Forty or fifty to hear ol’ Hosselton tell it.”

  Phin chuckled. “Wish you could hear Hoss tell this. Now, there was a man with a gift.”

  Thomas continued as if Phin had not interrupted. “Ollie did what every red-blooded man in Whitechapel had always wanted to do. He stood up to the damn cloaks. Those forty or fifty on the street that time, they were Ollie’s first crew. A week later, they went and blew up a canary chapel in Cathedral Tower.”

  “Woulda taken some stones, let me tell you,” Phin put in.

  “After that,” said Tom, “word got around. I heard about it through the gossip when I was backing at the air docks. A heroic young man leading a rebellion, killing cloaks—so many of us had just been waiting for it.”

  Missy sipped her drink, finding the fire unwelcome. “I remember the rags,” she said. “It went on for weeks.”

  Phin drained his glass with sudden exuberance. “I remember thinking ‘What’s this, a bloody kid’s in charge here?’”

  Thomas swirled his own liquor. “I believe your exact words were, ‘Sod it, I’m going.’”

  “But there were so many by then, see,” Phin said. “More than a hundred, and they were all reg’lar coves—family men, and youngsters and the like. And old, useless codgers like me. Ollie had us planting bombs, ambushing cloaks, cutting trams lines. Everything that happened, he had a plan. Those were the glory days, eh, clunker?” Tom nodded. “And Ollie took care of us, split us into crews, showed us the best places to hide. Hell, he had these tunnels built under Shadwell so’s we could move ’round. Never got caught, ain’t that a lark? Not once’d they get us.”

  “Not even the Boiler Men,” Thomas said, finally reviving his smile. “You can’t rightwise kill ’em, but they’re damned slow.”

  They smiled together, and Missy smiled with them. But this was not what she had asked for, and they knew it. No light anecdotes, but the meat of the matter.

  The laughter died away into the same grim silence.

  Phin refilled his drink. “The lady, here, knows how it ended.”

  Missy nodded. “I read it.”